


In the Forest

by orphan_account



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, in which littlewood is a fae thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 01:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He changes with the seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Forest

**Author's Note:**

> working title: overexcitable fae child something something something trees
> 
> unbeta'd, as usual

He wasn't always himself.

He remembers being a human, Martyn, and being attacked. He remembers his village, and how it burnt to the ground along with most of its citizens. He had stumbled, starving and stabbed and burnt, into the depths of the forest and collapsed under the biggest tree in the forest, and bled onto its roots.

He died after two days.

The trees patched him up, though. They pumped sap into his empty veins and wound vines around his broken organs, and lay bark where his skin had failed. They bandaged him with petals and wove him through with stems, and when he woke up three weeks later he was Littlewood.

-

He _hates_ autumn.

He gets sick too much and he cries during noon and doesn't know why. He's always tired and always sore, and he bruises and oozes sap and tears. The trees murmur their sleepy concerns and let him lay in their highest reaches, but he knows they have their own problems.

The flowers wilt silently into the soil and the trees lose their leaves, and he takes on their colours somewhere in the middle of everything.

His hair turns brown and its mottled through with reds and oranges, and his skin is a bruised brown-yellow that looks like he pulled it straight from the forest floor. He aches, and he feels like things inside of him are dying. 

On the last day of the season he curls up on a bed of dead leaves, tucked beneath the largest tree in the forest, and sleeps.

-

He wakes up three days into winter with a thin blanket of snow. The trees are quiet, and some whisper to him; they dream of leaves and warmth while they sleep through the season.

He sleeps with them, days at a time, in their boughs and at their bases. When he is awake, he is sluggish and tired, and the cold sap in his veins only allows for slow, thick movements.

He changes in other ways, too. His hair fades into the frosty blue of ice, speckled with white that gives him the constant appearance of having snowflakes resting on it. His skin is the colour of the sky before it snows, grey and clouded.

He's hungry in his brief snatches of consciousness. He eats when he can and drinks when he can't, but it doesn't ever help. He knows the trees feel the same because they whisper so, swaying and creaking in the brisk winter winds. They all hunger for the sun.

-

He knows it's spring because he can hear the forest, chattering after their long rest. He feels chlorophyll, not yet adjusted to the season, ignite in his veins, and he _sings_. 

He blooms at the joints with soft small flowers, and when he plucks them they drift to the ground and take root in the thawing soil. The blossoms are pink, the same feathery pink that tints his hair, and his skin is tinged with green in the mild sun of spring.

He wades through the freshly unfrozen rivers and scoops up handfuls to splash on the trees, and they laugh their creaking laughs. It rains, cold and soft, and he spins in the downpour and drinks the droplets like wine. The pollen that clogs the air is thick as honey, and he scatters it as he dances through the forest. Caked with mud and rain and petals, out in the woods, he fancies himself a king.

-

He basks in the sun that beats down on him, tucked carefully in the highest leafy branches of the trees. He sates winter's hunger, and lets the warm light hang over him like a second skin.

He cartwheels down the hills, laughing, and the flowers and grasses that flatten under his hands spring back up after him. He picks the smaller florets and braids them into thin chains, and hangs them off the lowest branches of the trees.

He dozes at the base of the mother tree, the biggest and oldest in the whole forest. She's the one who fixed him when he died, and he works for a day and a night to string together a crown of flowers large enough to fit around her base.

He sees his reflection while he swims. His hair is the colour of daylight, streaked through with pale-daffodil yellow, and his skin is red-tan from the sun and its burns. He only gets freckles in the summer, dim green flecks that pepper his whole body.

When he races through the dappled sunlight across the forest floor, moss springy beneath his mud-caked feet, he knows that this is what he was meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> man how about those obscure kingdom of the saplings references huh
> 
> KINGDOM TALK???? HMM?? im so clever


End file.
